This invention relates generally to insurance programs and, more particularly, to methods and systems for insuring membership fees, dues and assessments.
Many people desire to find a comfortable location to enjoy a relaxed life-style while having access to multiple amenities. In addition, many families enjoy spending time with people that have similar life styles, hobbies, and preferences. In addition, some people enjoy a certain activity so much, that they prefer to join a club to have access to such activities on a frequent basis.
Generally, in order to join such clubs, a person or family pays an initiation fee and annual or monthly dues. While the initiation fees are important to the club since they are used primarily for capital expenditure (golf course improvements, swimming pool, club house), the dues are used for operations such as salaries, restaurant and bar operations, daily maintenance and retail opportunities. Many clubs have one of two types of refundable initiation fee programs. The first type of program is for equity clubs where, once a requisite number of memberships to the club has been sold, a refund is paid to the resigned member, in the order of resignation, as each new membership is sold. Typically the amount paid is a percentage of the then current initiation fee. The resigning member is typically required to continue paying the monthly dues until the resigning member is replaced by a new member. The second type of program is for initiation deposit program clubs where the initiation fee is a deposit, i.e., a tax-free, no interest loan from the member. For a resigned member to recover the initiation deposit, the club membership must be full. The resigning member will then be repaid when a new member joins based on the resigning member's place on the resigned member list. Alternatively, if the club never achieves full membership, the resigning member is repaid no later than 30 years from the date the membership was first sold. Members are also sometimes asked to pay one-time assessments. An assessment differs from an initiation fee or dues payment in that an assessment is a special, and sometimes unexpected, one-time payment to the club by the members.
Prospective members are typically concerned that if they must leave a club for an unforeseen reason, they will not have the ability to retrieve all or a portion of the initiation fees, dues and assessments. This potential lack of prompt payback of the initiation fee is a deterrent to new people joining clubs. It is therefore desirable to enable a club member to obtain at least a portion of their payments to a club upon resigning from the club. In addition, it would be desirable if the club were reimbursed for the loss of such payments (i.e. initiation fees, dues, and assessments) in a reasonable amount of time to enable the reimbursement of these payments to the resigning member in a reasonable amount of time after their departure. It is still further desirable to allow members to finance all or part of the initiation fees, dues, and assessments.